Online Dating: How To Spot A Romance Scammer

How could it happen to me, the dating coach, the savvy dater, the women who helps her clients stay safe online? Yet, after almost four years of meeting wonderful guys online, a romance scammer had me fooled. Luckily, I grew wise to his devious ways pretty quickly. But there were many others before me who weren’t quite so lucky. I share my story to keep you safe from these con artists.

How it all began

He was very handsome (at least his fake photo was good looking), and he had a sad, sweet story. Romance scammers appeal to a woman’s vulnerability. Like many women, I’m a sucker for a man who’s lost his wife. The widower pity card is a very common cover. His profile also stated that he was a Modern Orthodox Jew, just like me. This is a rarity on JDate. But I noticed an inconsistency: Orthodox Jews keep kosher and attend synagogue most Sabbaths. His profile said he kept kosher sometimes and attended synagogue infrequently. That was my first clue that something was not right.

In our second email exchange on JDate, he asked for my private email address. As a man new to the dating scene after his wife’s “tragic death,” being online was overwhelming for him. He’d rather communicate privately. That sounded legit, so I gave him my private email address.

Warning: This was a big mistake!Stay in communication on the dating site until you feel you can trust a man with your private email. Even better, you should have a special email address dedicated only to dating, just in case you ever do get scammed.

He wrote me a lovely email, telling me the sad story of his wife’s death from cancer a few years earlier. He also said he was an orphan (cue violins), and his mom tragically died in a car crash a few years ago. Good job pulling on my heartstrings. He wrote about the importance of impeccable character traits in a mate. Ironic, huh, that the liar/scammer would write so much about respect, loyalty, fidelity, honesty, and great communication. Did I mention that those words were in all CAPS?

Warning: Be wary of extreme sob stories, especially in the beginning of communication with anyone online. Even if someone has gone through crisis, it’s inappropriate to go into detail until you’ve established some sort of relationship.

He said he wanted to get to know me slowly, as he was overwhelmed about being out in the dating world after his wife’s death. But in the next email, he said he had already taken down his profile, as he wanted to get to know me better.

Warning: When a person tells you that they took down their profile right away, it usually means that they’ll soon be kicked off the site. A seasoned scammer knows the drill. Someone’s bound to report them. So, they work quickly to obtain a few women’s private email addresses before they’re booted off.

As you can see, there were many red flags, but it was easy for me to push them under the rug and give the poor guy the benefit of the doubt. My next warning appeared the next time I logged into JDate. There was a message in my inbox that someone who recently tried to contact me had violated terms and was suspended. Even though they didn’t reveal who it was, my intuition told me it must have been him. (Duh, right?) But I still gave him the benefit of the doubt. If you’ve been dating online for a few years and the pickings begin to feel slim, it’s easy to ignore your intuition and hope for the best.

So, I asked him to call me, as his emails seemed to be going nowhere. I thought it might be a language issue, as he claimed to be of German descent.

Warning: Don’t give out your number until you’ve built some rapport and trust. I purposely gave out my cell number, so he wouldn’t be able to trace my home address. Once you’re ready to share numbers, your cell is preferable.

He called me after midnight. Good thing my phone was on silent. That was the final straw for me. Now I knew for sure something was really off with him. Who makes a first phone call to a woman after midnight? I texted him the following morning that it wasn’t okay to call me late at night, and he apologized profusely. Said it would never happen again.

Meanwhile, I kept Googling and searching for some information on him. Who was this guy? I found nothing on him, until a friend told me about Google Image Search (images.google.com).

I dragged his image from JDate to my desktop and dropped it into the Google Image search. What came up was worse than I could imagine.

There was an entire page online dedicated to this guy’s scamming. Seems he’d asked several women for money. This smooth talker went by the same name on different sites. He had a profile on ChristiansMingle.com, too. He wasn’t even a Jew, let alone an Orthodox one!

Like many scammers, his stories didn’t line up, from the way he posted about his Jewish observance, to a story about his son living in California, which became Texas in the next email. He wanted to move slowly, and then he “pulled his profile to get to know me better.” His photo was a lie, too. It was of a famous professor in London.

What to do when you’ve found a scammer?

Telling him that he’s busted will accomplish absolutely nothing except to teach him how to be better at scamming/victimizing the next woman. So, by all means, do not confront him.

Here’s what I did: I reported the abuse/fraud to the site immediately, giving clear examples and links to the page I found on the Internet uncovering the romance scam.

I told the perpetrator that I’d reunited with an old flame. I wished him well in his search for his beloved. And he thanked me for my good wishes.

Online dating is filled with all types of people, as is offline dating. Scammers are the rare exception. I still believe online dating is one of the best ways to find love today, but you need to stay safe.

Have you ever been the victim of an online romance scammer? If so, please share your experience below. If not, I hope I’ve helped prevent you from falling for one. Stay safe in your pursuit of love after 50!

For more midlife dating advice and a copy of my FREE report, “The Top Three Mistakes Midlife Daters Make (and how to turn them around to find love now)” please click here.

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Sandy Weiner is the founder of LastFirstDate.com. She's THE dating coach for women over 40 who want to attract a healthy lasting relationship. Tune in every Tuesday from 2-2:30 Eastern, as Sandy hosts Last First Date Radio http://blogtalkradio.com/lastfirstdate, a show about dating and relationships in midlife.Want to go on your LAST FIRST DATE? Schedule your complimentary 15-minute get acquainted call https://www.timetrade.com/book/VJDY6 to learn how dating coaching can transform your life.

26 Responses

Ah yes! They’re always widowers for some reason. I did give an email address to guy once, an address I created just for online dating. It only took one email for me to realize he was a scammer. I see them often on sites and have become good at picking up the inconsistencies. But I know of a few people who have been swept off their feet by these charmers. Great suggestions–particularly the phone number give-out.

Thanks for your comment, Walker. It helps to know that another smart, savvy dater got pulled in by the charms of the scammer/widower. If you’re vulnerable, it can be difficult to weed out the scammer from the sincere. I’ve reported tons of these guys to the online dating sites. I, too, have become good at spotting them. Burn me once, and I’m all over it the next time. I hope more women will get wise to the ways of the scammers. It helps that they’re often bad liars 🙂

I was taken in once too. This guy was good, even called me and we spoke on the phone. Till he asked me for money to help him just get through a rough patch…..I felt so used. Of course, I didn’t send and blocked all means of communication but I couldn’t believe that I fell for that, I was so diligent about my online practices. Now, if I suspect anything is untoward, I do the Google Image search right away and also, I actually have them send an email to my personal email account, (just a online dating one) and I check their IP address. Most often then not, they are not where they are from…..

Thanks for sharing your experience about an online scammer. Glad to hear you were smart enough to get out quickly. Asking for money is a big tip. You seem to be doing all the right things to filter out the scum from the good guys. Good luck to you!

A desperate woman is a vulnerable woman…. And none of us should ever get to the desperation point. There are plenty of bullshitters and scammers out there so at first sign of “something ain’t right here” be sure to trust your gut and run. There are too many nice good men out there to waste a moment on the losers. I am actually giving on line dating a break, I don’t really think its a great way to meet good men.

Not all women who fall for scammers are desperate. Not by any means. Vulnerable maybe, but that’s not a bad character trait. I agree, no one should date from a desperate place. For every b.s.er and scammer, there are tons more good people dating online. The fact is, online dating works, you just have to know how to sift and sort through to find love. If you’re not dating online, you are greatly reducing the chance of meeting a quality man. I wish you luck.

Thank you, Sandy, for pointing out that a woman or man surely doesn’t have to be “desperate” for love to fall victim to a sweetheart scam. I’ve heard several stories where the victim wasn’t even looking for love or on a dating site. Personally, I had been on the website for travelers for some years, had no previous experience with scammers of any sort on any website, and had met my (recently deceased) husband on Match.com. So I had a favorable attitude towards on-line connections–and I was emotionally vulnerable, though there’s no way the scammer could have known that. He wooed me for many months, and I gave my heart and my monies. My story is in a book, which is online as a blog; http://www.dupedaSweetheartScam.com.

Please don’t misunderstand my message…I simply pointed out that with more than 6 red flags, and the feeling that “pickings felt slim” it made is “easy” for you to overlook the warning signs. We need to trust our intuition and not feel like just because the pickings feel slim, it’s ok to take our chances when it’s pretty clear that you are dealing with a con artist.

Thanks for clarifying what you meant. I didn’t take offense. But as a dating coach, I do see people who ignore many more than 6 red flags. Pickings do often feel slim after 50, and it’s easy to look at what’s positive and ignore the negative. Important to pay close attention to all negatives from the beginning, trusting your intuition like you say, which was the intention of this article.

I met an on line scammer a year ago. He displayed some of the signs although I didn’t know it at the time. I was a widow of 3 years and totally new to dating after a 40 year marriage. I am 68 at the present time. After talking for a couple of days he asked me to go on Yahoo Messenger ( stupid me did). Soon after he had to leave for Italy(homeland).. By this time I was in love with him(in love with the idea). To make a long story short he wooed me and said he loved me and came up with stories of why he needed money which I unfortunately gave him. He then had to go to Ghana and is still there. Yes I am still with him (1year and 3 months). I have not given him money in 6 months. He calls everyday and messages me thru out each day. Says he is very much in love with me. I cannot get him out of my system I really love this guy. I don’t even know why. Why do scammers hang on even though they are no longer getting anything?

I was scammed by the first guy to really show interest in me. He was a “petroleum engineer” and we had a great time chatting for a couple of weeks. But then he traveled to Africa for business, had problems getting out and seemed to think my checkbook was his ticket home. Lesson learned 🙁 NOW, I copy a few sentences from their profile and do a google search … scammers show up quickly. And I do report the results to the website. But I never thought to do an image search … although I cannot imagine they would ever use their real photo, it could help if they chose to write an original profile.

Sorry to hear about your scammer experience, but you taught me something new. I never thought to copy lines for the scammer’s profile and enter that into a google search. Brilliant!

The good news is that you were a quick study. You will not be giving any more money to scammers in foreign countries.

By the way, the fake images do show that these guys are scammers, as they did in my case.
Very smart people get scammed every day. I once heard an NPR reporter talk about falling for a robot in Russia, posing as a woman, eventually asking for money. It wasn’t even a person on the other end. Just a cleverly programmed robot.

Your advice is so important, and so real because it comes from your own experience. It’s funny how we are SO sure this won’t happen to us because we’re savvy women….but, ya’ know…

I have a story about the flip side – a guy who was genuine and wanted me straightaway to know so. While we were still communicating through the site he told me his real name and suggested I check him out on Google. He had published scientific papers and there was plenty of context and plenty of opportunity to call employers and colleagues (I didn’t).

Then he suggested that I check him out on Zabasearch, which I did. Zabasearch listed a woman’s name at the same address. He had represented himself on the site as a widower, and I was able to confirm his status via her on-line death announcement. I matched his professional background with his address, and he offered to let me call him if I was nervous about giving out my phone number. By that time I felt comfortable enough to let him call me, and the phone number on my caller ID was the same as the one I had seen on both Google and Zabasearch.

Frankly I feel creepy about checking a guy’s credentials, but in the current atmosphere, it’s worrysome not to. I think it’s reasonable to ask a guy to confirm his identity with whatever Web info is out there.

Thank you for the advice about Googling the image. It is reassuring to know that I have not been the only one to initially fall for a scam like this. I great reminder to all of us to be careful and smart with online relationships.

Wow! That is quite a thorough search of a guy with nothing to hide. Refreshing, even if a bit extreme. I usually go on my gut after a conversation or two. I try to meet the guy as quickly as possible to see what he’s like in person, because that’s one of the best tests there is. Remember the old days, when you’d meet someone at a party and begin a relationship without knowing his life story? Ah, nostalgia….

I have been divorced for eight yrs and can count the number of dates I have opted to accept on my ten fingers. Like you, I consider myself to be intelligent and not at all gullible. I recently made the decision to take a stab at online dating again (tried it once in the past), and immediately out of the gate, I was targeted by a scammer. After about three emails to an account I had set up specifically for online dating comms, I smelled a rat! A few google searches later I found others who had posted reports with the same pic etc. it was very frustrating and I reported the scam. I deleted the email account and shut down my profile on the site. I have since decided that while I may be missing out on a large pool of fish, there is still too much personal info going online placing folks at risk and it takes a lot of time to sift through the volumes of communications from interested parties. The whole experience reminded me of the countless conversations I have had with my teens about online safety. Online dating fraud is skyrocketing as are cyber crimes and identity theft. I have several friends who have successfully met a mate online. However, I have chosen to have faith that I will meet someone through my normal daily activities when God’s timing is right. If I don’t, then my personal approach will continue to be insuring that I live my life to the fullest as a happy and healthy single woman. 🙂

3 scammers in the first week of “online dating” site activity. I won’t name the site but “hatch.com” didn’t want to really help me much with the reports I gave them. I wish I had read this article before I posted my profile. While I didn’t give out too much info on the profile (I even had a wrong zip code somewhere in there by accident), I did allow the communications to go offsite way too early.

Inconsistencies in story lines and the guy asking for money were the red flags for me. Not sounding like a typical person of my culture in their writings (word flow, language, etc) was another red flag. Guy supposedly in the military said he lost his best friend the same day he’s on a dating site? Hmmmm…

One more thought that I should have paid attention to – meet for coffee first time, not dinner. I spent way too long with someone that I just didn’t have chemistry with, and while I survived it, I ended up with a terrible headache, and a negative attitude for the week about dating.

Kathy, the same thing happened to me. 3 scammers in 2 weeks. And I’ve read so much convoluted sentence structure, I’m starting to think in broken English, lol. Vut, I was so sure the second one was real when he asked to Skype to prove he was. And he was gorgeous!! And then, he was a wreck. His equipment was being held, and he needed $720. Funny, that is the same amount the first one asked for. I think there must be a school to teach them the routines.

Our daughter has a friend who is being scammed and even tho I spent this whole past week finding evidence that the guy she is in love with and engaged to, has been talking to for 20 months, she won’t believe anyone, gets very angry and keeps on with him. She said she loves and trusts him and when she questioned him after finding another name with his picture a while back he told her, oh someone must have stolen his pictures. She’s already sent him money, I’m sure will be sending more, he wants her to buy him an iphone6, which is $600 and he wants her to get him a credit card. This is so sickening and we don’t know what to do. I found 4 other profiles with his pictures, through google and the picture he gave her of his daughter is stolen from a porn star model! She’s lost in a fantasy world believing that they are going to go to Hawaii to get married, which has been postponed over and over…. He is supposedly in NIgeria as a contractor. Wife died of cancer…. bla bla bla…..

Thankyou for your sharing. Indeed it helps a lot when I used the images.google.com
Im not shock since from the beginning it was not right, but still it makes me a week on confusion.
They start using a professional access like linkedIn to knocking the door and asking for whatsapp message. Though I only have a phone number, luckily he sent me some photos (by my hard push request of course). And I used it to trace who is he.

I had one from FB friendship request. Aside from his name being the same as a soccer star, he would message me, after midnight which was acceptable as I don’t sleep. He started talking about money, but the even bigger flag was his syntax?verbage? Changed. It was a tag team. The first wrote “your”, later that night it was “ur”, then back to your. So, when one contacted me via a dating site, the flags were rolling immediately. Via burn phone texting, his Wife and first CHILD, no sex mentioned, died and he was raising his daughter. Flag. They always call me Dear, always a structural or oil related engineer, and did I know he was in Romania for 2 weeks…Busted. I coincidentally have a FB friend in Romania so am quick with Google translate, so I texted in Romanian, that if he was running short on cash, he needed to try again. Haven’t heard from him today. I so appreciate the additional advice and information. Like you, I felt saavy, and almost, but whew. I needed the reassurance

My previously faithful wife of 37 years was targeted by these creeps on Facebook and fell for one. She was not looking for a relationship with anyone but was feeling lonely and desperate when I was diagnosed with a heart condition. She was feeling old and fat at the time and her self image has never been great. He listened sympathetically to her problems for a while and then began love bombing her with flattery and romance. He promised to take care of her if something happened to me. She fell for it! He said he would wait for her so they carried on a cyber love affair right under my nose for five months. He said he needed money to get to the states on leave. She sent him money over and over again by way of credit card advances totaling over 3000.00. He promised to pay it all back when they could meet and carry out an actual affair. I was heartbroken. I am trying to forgive my wife and get our finances back on track after this emotionally and financially devastating experience. She was overwhelmed with an infatuation from all of the sweet talk he was dishing out.

I too have been having conversations with a man who is supposedly working in Brussels but lives in SAN Antonio. He has been so romantic and talked about having a vacation to come and meet me . He recently asked me to buy I tunes cards and send to him to pay for ticket . My gut feeling is telling me he is not who he says he is …… his pics are on the scam site and Different names by them all but not the name he messages me with.
I am so confused by all this and never done this sort of thing before.

Oh my goodness! Sure would have been good to read all of these accounts of being love bombed and falling in ‘love’ – obsession, infactuation, etc… prior to me being bombed on and fixated on the daily emails, texts and sometimes phone calls. I craved the lovely attention!
Of course the photo attached to his name was desireable. He was a contractor with a deceased wife and a college-age son. Not available to meet natcherally. Then out of state and got a multi-million dollar contract overseas. And then the pitch for iTunes gift cards to the tune of $400. Thank God not asking for more! The cashier even told me that I was being scammed! And deep down I knew I was! What is wrong with me? Next mornings email more lovely words. I responded with repay me the $400 for iTunes gift cards. He texted me to call him. I did not. Had phone ringer off last night, recent calls showed him calling about 9 pm.
Email said I will do that. (Repay me).
At any rate, I am seeing a psychitrist to get some smarts instilled in me. Insurance covers it. Am going to see about going back to work. Even sending cards, I knew he wasn’t real!